Some years ago, needing to quickly identify duplicate files within Unix file systems residing on embedded devices or NAS (e.g., Synology, QNAP, D-Link), and dissatisfied with the tools I found online, I developed a command-line Perl tool with the following goals:
- Very lightweight and usable even on embedded devices (requires only the Perl 5.7.3 interpreter or higher, with no additional dependencies);
- Maximum efficiency on very slow disks or network drives.
Thus, the first version of the free software ffdup was born, which I released under the GNU/GPL v3.0 license on:
ffdup – GitHub Repository Link
The project includes a Bash script for the parametric generation of a directory and file structure to support automated unit tests.
In a future version, I plan to introduce the detection of duplicate directories.
